Source: OnePeterFive.com
The Dangers of Rational-Speculative Theology
The post-doctoral dissertation of the young Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in Saint Bonaventure,[1] introduces us to the heart of the great medieval debates on the profound meanings of history. Through this work, I first encountered the eschatological interpretation developed by the seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor within the context of the scholastic disputes of that era. The fact that the rational theology of certain professors had embraced heretical theses appeared so serious to the Seraphic Doctor that he directly referenced the Apocalypse of Saint John the Theologian.
In his 1268 treatise, Collationes de septem donis Spiritus Sancti (Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit), Bonaventure exposed three fundamental errors arising from an exercise of reason that, without appealing to the supernatural light of faith, presumed to provide complete explanations of existence:
The error against the cause of being is that of the eternity of the world which affirms that the world is eternal. The error against the ground of understanding is that of fatal necessity which posits that all things happen by reason of necessity. And the third is that of the unity of the human intellect which posits that there is one intellect in all people.[2]
Once these doctrinal errors were rigorously established, the Franciscan father launched his final critique against them, asserting that their “closed” and “self-sufficient” nature—deriving from the cyclical character of the number 6—leads to a single possible conclusion:
These errors are symbolized in Revelation by the number of the beast’s name. It is said there that the beast had a name whose number was six hundred sixty six. This is a cyclic number. The first is based on the circle of movement and time; the second is based on the movement of the stars; and the third is based on the one Intelligence, saying that it enters and leaves a body. This is entirely false.[3]
Thus, what we face is not merely a denunciation of the heresies entertained by some professors at the University of Paris, but an identification of the infamous number of the beast—666—imprinted on the minds of its adherents (symbolized in the biblical text by the “forehead”). Furthermore, in his comments on the Hexaemeron, St. Bonaventure develops this interpretation, showing that the rationalistic theology influenced by the rise of Aristotelianism can be identified with the “smoke rising from the abyss” (Apocalypse 9:21).
Setting aside the contextual details of the Seraphic Doctor’s interpretation, what struck me from the first reading was its spiritual-allegorical nature. Contrary to literal interpretations that see the mark of the beast as a physical form of “tattooing” its slaves, Bonaventure identifies a profound perversion of the intellect of those marked as the true nature of the “seal.” This is not a visible, physical mark but an invisible, spiritual “stamp.” As I demonstrated in a recent article on this issue,[4] the root of this seems to be that “earthly love,” corrupt and corrupting, which enslaves the souls of those consumed by it. If the wise pagan Magi—who adored the divine infant—revealed the divinity of the one born of the Virgin Mary, other pagan sages—Apollonius of Aphrodisias, Plato, and Proclus—appear to help us understand the nature of that love which, instead of lifting people toward heaven, binds them to the earth (i.e., “this world”) through sins of the flesh. Against this degraded and degrading love, Saint John the Apostle warns:
Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him (Nolite diligere mundum, neque ea quae in mundo sunt. Si quis diligit mundum, non est caritas Patris in eo—I John 2:15).
Conceiving of the human soul as a vessel, we can understand that the love of this world, once it fills the vessel, excludes the love of God. The reciprocal, of course, is true. This is why St. Augustine states in his second homily on the First Epistle of John:
When you have emptied your heart of earthly love, you shall drink in love Divine: and thenceforth begins charity to inhabit you, from which can nothing of evil proceed.[5]
From Augustine’s interpretation, we can easily deduce the devil’s main concern: to “steal” the love that humans owe exclusively to their Creator. This is only possible by exploiting the corrupt attachments people have to fleeting, earthly, evanescent things—especially immoral sexual pleasures.
As St. Hildegard of Bingen also shows in her Liber Vitae Meritorum (The Book of Divine Works), the Antichrist will preach an anti-Gospel—complete sexual libertinism, without limits. Chastity will be denied, and sins against nature—which Plato condemned in the dialogue Phaedrus—will be promoted and widely spread. Thus, we see once again the relationship between love and the beast who “shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads” (Apocalypse 13:16).
Having established, with the help of the pagan authors mentioned above, the link between the number of the beast and the corrupted (and corrupting) love condemned by the Apostle John, I received the final clue that opened the doors to the most probable answer regarding the meaning of the three sixes in the number of the beast’s name. To clarify this assertion, I will first present the verses from John’s text, where we will see the context in which the love for the world is mentioned….